At least 257 people were killed when an Algerian military plane crashed outside the capital Algiers on Wednesday morning. The country’s defense ministry said, the world’s deadliest aviation disaster in almost four years and the nation’s worst ever in the confirmation of the incident.
The plane plowed into a field shortly after departing Boufarik military air base southwest of the capital, the ministry said. It was bound for Bechar, Algeria, near the Moroccan border, with a stop in Tindouf, the military said.
The ministry said the dead included members of the military, their families and 10 crew members.
The cause of the crash and the purpose of the flight weren’t immediately clear. Algeria’s state news agency said the plane was a Russian-made Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane. The ministry said it had convened a panel to investigate the cause.
The crash is the deadliest since the shootdown of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014. The crash of that Boeing 777 killed all 298 people onboard.
Algeria’s worst aviation disaster before Wednesday was in 2003 when a Boeing 737 airliner operated by flag carrier Air Algerie plunged to the ground after an engine failure on takeoff. The crash killed 102 people onboard, with one person escaping with serious injuries.
The Algerian air force largely operates Soviet- or Russian-designed planes. The service, with around 14,000 staff, operated 12 Il-76 transport planes, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The Ilyushin Il-76 is a Soviet-era military transport plane commonly used in countries that had ties to the Soviet Union.
